Allow me to say a few words about grouping music by genre: it’s a stupid concept. I wish the world would banish it to the annals of mid-20th century mega-rcrdlbl company dinasaurs. There is no use for such vague labels as genre. What the hell do they even mean? Look, for example, at the image above – just a small segment of the, oh, 200+ ‘genres’ I have in my iTunes library. I think maybe 10% of them make any sense at all.

Okay, now, many of you probably noticed that iTunes launched a new version of it’s software this past week. Cool, if you use it a lot. But for some ridiculous reason, they decided to disable the ability to get rid of the ‘genre’ column while browsing in the old (and my preferred) boring, spreadsheet style layout. Luckily, I found a quick and painless solution for us Macheads on MacOSXHints.com.

Quit iTunes, launch Terminal, and enter this command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE

Relaunch iTunes, open the browser, and you’ll notice the Genre column has vanished. You can reverse this by quitting iTunes and repeating the above command, but with TRUE instead of FALSE.

Bing. No genres.

This does get me thinking about the ways in which people initiate their music listening sessions is changing. People once touched, held and looked at at the records on a shelf and pulled out something cool and fresh and in-the-moment. Now, iTunes looks more like a spreadsheet than anything else. And oddly, even with their fancy new CoverFlow layouts, I still use the spreadsheet look. Because I’m used to it? I’m not sure. When I want to listen to something, often times it’s specific and browsing by title is the easiest way to get there. CoverFlow kinda works when I have absolutely no idea of what to listen to, but that’s usually when I default to shuffle. Or ditch iTunes all together and hit up Last.fm or the Hype Machine.

What’s the solution here? How do we recreate the analog, physical experience of listening to records in an immediate digital world when memory is no longer based on a physical object like a record, but rather a name of a band, or how recently I bought something?

Go buy a record player, I guess.


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  • ronny day

    yes, finally a tip that works for me, thanks for the use of your knowledge, my brain's a lot better now^_^

  • David

    Nice handy tip.

    Another one for you - related but slightly different:

    I actually LIKE to view my movies in Grid View or Coverflow by Genre (ok, call me weird but it just works for me).
    Most of my movies will fit into a number of different Genres though - for example "Yes Man" fits into both Comedy and Romance genres. The problem is that in the Grid View, I don't just see an two separate Genres for Comedy and Romance with "Yes Man" listed in both - instead I see a single Genre called "Comedy;Romance."
    Is there any way to configure iTunes to show the INDIVIDUAL Genres in Grid View rather than combined genres? (Obviously I would prefer not to have to select a single genre for each movie).

    Cheers,

    David

  • Ben

    Hi,
    I'm wondering if you're able to help me out here...
    I have a heap of movies (over 200), some of which I have seen and some of which I haven't; and I'd like to add a tab for the movies I have not seen (when in the Grid view).

    The "TV Shows" Library (when in the grid view) has a tab called "NEW" (in addition to the GENRES and TV SHOWS tabs); any idea how I can add one for Movies as well?

    Cheers,

    p.s. and yes! I want to keep all 200 movies!

  • Hey Ben, sorry I don't know how to do that in iTunes. However, I might recommend you checking out a cool app called Multiplex that friends of mine made: http://multiplexapp.com/

  • Lindsay

    THANK YOU! I have been wondering how to get rid of that f@#ing Genre crap for some time now.

  • OL

    Thank you! Add me to the list of genre-haters.

  • omelette

    thank you. thank you. f*ck genres. ridiculous.

  • mike

    hey mark, thanks for the tip

    in RE to genres = customizable categories, nothing is stopping you from doing that except having completely borked genre ID3 tags. And who cares about that?

    I'm sure you know how to do it, so I won't explain myself, but get on it, I think it'd be kinda cool at least.

    just a lot of work, maybe if you had macros set up to quick add songs to custom categories, it'd be handy.

  • No problem, guys. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

  • Hey! Thanx a lot man, this was really helpful!
    I'm also one of the "specific listeners" ;-)

  • Ben

    Thanks.

    My problem with genres is that they are pigeon holes into which music doesn't always fit. Sure, classical is classical and blues is blues, but a lot of good music sits in between genres or completely defies a genre-based categorization. I mean, is it Alternative? Rock? Indie? Alternative Rock? Alternative Indie Rock? Post Alternative Indie Rock?

    Apple, please restore the "Hide Genre when browsing" option. Please!

  • You're a star, thanks. I wouldn't be so critical of iTunes as regards the genre. If it was possible to specify more than one genre per album/artist and was consistently implemented, it would've been the "genius" of yesteryear. I wish genius was better, do I have to use it for it to improve, or can I rely on other people using it for it to improve? Pity Moodlogic for the PC died, same idea, but great. Thanks, again!

  • Wouldn't it be great if genres = customizable categories?

  • Ohh :) I'll have to try this - I wonder if I can add categories as well with this code :/

  • And you make playlists for a living, David, so that's saying something. :)

  • David

    I've always ignored the iTunes genre classification so this is moot for me, but about the lack of tactile browsability. It is very hard to go random or eureka with iTunes, therefore sometimes hard to put together a truly outstanding playlist.. sometimes I just sin the dial - which i know is very like shuffling, but it gives me a place to start. Create your own genres!

  • thanks for the tip. itunes genre is fascism.

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